Dr. Joe Tarkon is a Public Health Physician, a certified Global Health Professional, and a Health Education specialist. In this interview with ISHAYA IBRAHIM, the U.S. based Nigerian doctor who also is the presiding Pastor of the Redeemed Christian Church of God (RCCG), City of David Parish in Atlanta, Georgia, gives practical solution on how to handle the challenges besetting Nigeria’s healthcare system.
You recently announced doing a free medical outreach in Ugep, Cross River State. What inspired this gesture?
Let me back up a little and tell you how it’s been organized. Its been organized by Vital Health International. Vital Health International is a not-for-profit programe that I have in Nigeria. For about six years I have been running a health education talk show on the radio. And it has run for about six years on Federal Radio Corporation of Nigeria, Hit FM, Planet 101, Inspiration FM. So, it’s been syndicating across the country with 62 million listeners a week. And the goal is just to educate people about medical issues, because I realized that a lot of people don’t know simple things in medicine. What they say is that what you don’t know will not hurt you. But it’s not true. But what you don’t know hurts you a lot because I’ve seen people die from simple medical conditions that are avoidable. I’ve seen people taken decisions of medical conditions that they should not have taken if they knew any better.
During the period when I ran the programme…It just ended this year. During the period, I got calls from all over the country. That’s how I became aware of some of the things happening in the country. We heard some cases that were not properly handled by doctors. By the time the people called, I realized that they were not properly managed by the doctors so I asked the caller, go back and asked the doctor this question and this question. There were cases that the patients died because of poor management. Some of my personal friends have died from simple things like hypertension. At this age and stage, hypertension should not be killing anybody.
I come from Cross River, so I’m familiar with some of the socio-economic issues there. There are three things we want to accomplish. Number one, we will be doing a leadership training. One of the issues I found across Africa…In fact that is the greatest problem we have in Africa and Nigeria, is leadership development. So, we are doing a leadership training. There are two components to that. We will be training Christian leaders about the fundamentals and discipline of the Christian Faith. Then we will be training young people on the fundamentals of leadership. How do you start a business? How do you run a business? What do you do? And how to develop those of them who have aspirations to become political leaders? It’s going to be short. Its one day for the leadership development, that’s Wednesday December 16. Then on Thursday morning through evening and on Friday morning, there will be a medical mission component, and we will be addressing medical issues. We are working in collaboration with the General Hospital in Ugep. I’ve been there. I’ve spoken to doctors. I have some doctors who are coming with me from the U.S. We will be seeing patients with routine medical issues. We will also do minor surgeries. You know for the layman, every surgery is not minor. Hernia, appendix, and some simple masses here and there, abscess incision and all that.
On Friday evening and Saturday evening, we are having evangelistic outreach where we will be preaching the word of God, praying for the sick, good music. Gospel artistes are going to be coming and local ministers will also be there.
What’s the projected number of cases you hope to handle?
Because I’ve not particularly done a medical outreach, but a friend of mine just finished one in Lagos. I hear that one of the days they saw 500 people. By the next day, 750 people. So, the crowd increases by the day. My hope is that with a community like Ugep, and with the number of doctors we have, we may be seeing about a 1,000 people a day. So if we see 2,000 people during those two days that will be great. You don’t see that in a hospital.
What’s the prominent ailment in Ugep?
I’m a public health physician primarily. One of the things we discovered in studies across Sub Saharan Africa is that obstetric and gynecological problems are huge in Nigeria. In fact, next to India, Nigeria has the highest mortality and fatality from antepartum hemorrhage, maternal hemorrhage during pregnancy and after delivery. If we want to take that perspective, these are mainly women issues – bleeding during pregnancies and after pregnancies. So, I’m trying to see if I can get an obstetrician and gynecologist there. Even at that, that’s not the kind of thing we can handle in that environment because I’ve been in that hospital and the facilities in that hospital are deplorable. But you know that coming from Africa, i have practiced medicine in Nigeria. We have some general issues. Malaria, high blood pressure, infections and things like that.
What’s the difference practicing medicine in Nigeria and abroad?
They are two planets apart. Apart from the fact that resources are there, here we don’t have resources. From a strict medical standpoint, medical practice in Nigeria is almost dead. Our hospitals are death traps. I’ve been to Ugep General Hospital, it’s pathetic. I couldn’t believe they are treating people there.
Is it a hopeless situation?
Yesterday (October 29), I had a long conversation with some of my friends, the Nigerian general socio-political situation is abysmal. Not for lack of resources. When I say resources, human resources, financial resources, material resources, even the moral resources. The heart of the average Nigerian who is involved in governance, in my opinion, is so pathologically demented. They have no plans to help the Nigerian situation. The trajectory of our body polity in this country is so backward and so stunted. The problem is so endemic. I went to the University of Ife. The last time I went to Ife, I almost wept. The building looks deplorable, the place has broken down. Despite all of that, we are still training people, we are still churning out doctors who can stand their ground anywhere in the world with limited resources, limited exposure.
It’s a long walk. We have to change our educational system. We have to delve into the abyss of our medical situation before we start dealing with our own consciousness of how to handle money. The mentality is that ‘get all you can, can all you get, sit on the can, throw away the key live for the rest of your family with everything in the can, and let the whole world jump into the ocean.’
Do we have the money? Yes we have the money. When you hear figures that people are bring out during election time that they are using to buy votes, that they are using to buy positions, that they are using to win an election, so you know that we have the money. So, where’s all the money.
Why do you think there is so much greed here to the point of an accountant geneneral stealing N92 billion. Does it have to do with our gene?
I don’t want to think it has anything to do with our gene. The heart of man is the same everywhere in the world. So, there is corruption in Africa, there is corruption in Western Europe, there is corruption everywhere. That’s the heart of man which is deceitful and desperately wicked. That’s universal. There are three issues in this country which I want to mention here. Number one is leadership. We don’t have leadership. We have good people who have aspired to leadership. But when they go there, they got contaminated.
There was a short spell before the last eight years I saw one man run this country for a couple of months, with a level of integrity, and with some measure of probity and with an effort to advance the country forward. But when the Buhari government was coming, I said it that one of the things I knew about Buhari, the man was frozen in the past. In his 30 years of being out of office, I don’t know any single conference he attended, I didn’t hear of any speech that he gave at local, national or international community. And if I want to judge him based on his precedence when he was military head of state of this country, the man was an extremist-fundamentalist religious bigot. And I said if that man comes, one thing that will happen to this country is that he would propagate Islamic fundamentalism across the country. Then, they killed Christians. And I said that was going to happen again. I also said unfortunately, a Redeemed Pastor would appear to be complicit. Yemi Osinbajo, good man with a good heart, but with the presidential system of government we run in this country where the vice president is just an ad-on, whatever he does is whatever the president allows him to do.
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Eight years later, we’ve seen all of that. How many Christians were slaughtered by Boko Haram coming across the country? Didn’t we have security? So leadership is one of our problems. We have people who go into office and all they do they amass as much as possible. They don’t have any vision for the country. I am Christian and my Bible tells me where there is no vision the people perish. I live in a country where people have vision for their country, a plan for their country to span decades, generations. This has nothing to do with Buhari being a Muslim. Dubai is a Muslim country and is one of the cutting edge countries. Look at the things they do in Dubai that makes Nigerians to be flocking to Dubai. What about Saudi Arabia in terms of advancement, in terms of development in the health care system, the educational system.
Another problem we have in the country is corruption. The country is pathetically corrupt. And when we say people are corrupt, it’s not just the people in power. I watched one of the senators justifying why they wanted to buy foreign-made SUVs. Why don’t they buy from local manufacturers here if they are patriotic? Why do they need that kind of vehicle in this austere times when Nigerians cannot feed, can’t get good medical treatment.
Look at the pathological conditions where judges of our courts are being humoured because of the obvious distortion of judgements by virtue of the amount of money they’ve collected. In some hospitals, some doctors will not treat a patient until they collect money. Teachers will not teach and allow students to pass until they collect money. I hear that across board.
Religion is also part of the problem. Both Christian and Muslim leaders are complicit to some of the things that our corrupt leaders have done. They look the other way. From what I hear, they too collect money from these corrupt leaders.
From what you said about the judges, it seems you don’t have trust about the last election?
Which election? The European Union came here and wrote a report which everybody could read. We were there when the election results were being tabulated and the chairman of INEC said if you don’t accept, go to court. And I hear that the Electoral Law clearly stipulates that if there is an objection at any point in time, there will be a pause, they will review it before they move forward. But I was watching it in real time that if you are not happy, just go to court.
What should Nigeria do to retain doctors in the country
I left medical school 34 years ago. At the time I left medical school, one of my uncles saw me. He said ‘what are you doing here.’ He said medicine is dead in this country. That’s 34 years ago. And it was a lot better than what it is today. As a doctor in this country, you don’t have the resources to practice. How many patients have died because there was no oxygen in the tank.
I remember when I worked here at a children hospital. A parent brought in their little boy. This boy didn’t have enough blood. He needed to be transfused. I had to go to Island Maternity to get blood for him. So, we left with the hospital ambulance. The traffic was so bad. I came out from the ambulance, I ran to Island Maternity, crossmatched the blood, did everything. Ran back to the hospital. By the time I got back to the hospital, this youngman had died. This boy should never have died if there was blood. And this happens everyday.
Back to the question. Why will a doctor stay here when he knows that there are better opportunities outside. I have a friend here in Lagos. He is the MD of one of hospitals. He said that when he hires a doctor, within two months the doctors leave. So, he begs them that just give him two weeks before they leave. I will give you two solutiions. Long term and short term. This is a long term. We need a leader who will be deliberate about investing in the health care system. Both from the primary health care level. I remember Ransom Kuti was the one who set up the primary health care system where in the 774 local government, they were supposed to have primary health care centres to take care of people at that micro level. So, we need a leader to invest in the sector and a complete overhaul to the primary health care level to the institutional training of doctors and providing the resources for doctors and ensuring that doctors are well taken care of. Then secondly, which is short term. Let’s go hire doctors outside the country. Let’s go to India, Cuba or somewhere and bring them in to take care of our people because doctors are leaving. The other day I heard that they shut down the surgery unit of one of the hospials in Benue State because there was no surgeon.
Lawmakers are spending $58 milliion on foreign-made SUVs. How much impact do you think the money will make if it is put in our hospitals?
I went to Ugep General Hospital, I don’t want to tell you what I saw. I also went to Ife. I went to the Renal Unit. While we were there, they took light. A doctor had come to take samples from a patient. Guess what he was using – cellphone torchlight. This is a centre of excellence. Some of the best doctors graduated there.
I also went to Ugep General Hospital. Number one, they don’t have ambulance. Number two, the labour ward was like a mechanic worshop in terms of the decay of the bed, equipment, the filthiness. I refused to enter the surgical ward. One million dollar wil transform that hospital. One million dollar will transform the primary health care centres in the 774 local government.
Why is Hypertension more common among black people?
It’s not that black people are more prone to hypertension. What we are discovering is that some disease condition, the impact on black people are worse. A whiteman will have it, a blackman will have, but the impact on the blackman may turn out to be worse. I don’t know why. Perhaps its our genes. But in treatment, there are some medications that work beter in black people than white people.
